More

Baptists to boycott Disney

Delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly June 18 to boycott Walt Disney Co., including its theme parks, Disney stores and the ABC TV network owned by Disney, because they promote "immoral ideologies."

Members of the largest Protestant denomination had threatened a boycott last year, but most of this year's 12,000 delegates decided a threat wasn't enough.

The decision wasn't without opposition. Some delegates expressed concern over the possible negative fallout for the denomination. Others questioned whether church members will be able to stop supporting all of Disney's holdings, ranging from cruise lines and sports teams to newspapers.

In other actions:

* The denomination affirmed the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings. The resolution is connected with current litigation involving Circuit Judge Roy Moore, who was ordered to remove a plaque of the Ten Commandments from his Alabama courtroom (see April, page 52, and July, page 42).

* Delegates urged Bible publishers to hold to "historic principles of biblical translation"--a reaction to the International Bible Society's plan (now scrapped) to publish a "gender-inclusive" version of the popular New International Version of the Bible. The version would have substituted gender-neutral words such as people for gender-specific words such as mankind.

* The Baptists also voted to urge the United States and other nations to ban human cloning. But they stressed the "importance of genetic research" aimed at curing genetic diseases.